So. Demonic Investments are cool, but like, they imply that there is a specific class of spirits, demons, which are the only sort which grant Investments. This is unfortunate because it takes a shit-ton of play area out. Like, almost every faction should be able to access Investments without consorting with demons. Investments are great, because they're powerful, extract a great price, and if Investments are actually available in an innocent fashion to most Conventions and Traditions, it means that Nephandi can find it easier to hide in plain sight which is even more awesome. And finally, it makes 'demon' a politically loaded term, which is great. A 'demon' to a Chorister might well be a completely valid entity to provide assistance and worship to for a Verbena or Dreamspeaker.
Hermetics and Christian (and Islamic/Judaist? I'm not too sure on those) Choristers should be able to acquire gifts from angels.
The Euthanatos have pantheons of gods who should grant gifts to their followers.
Dreamspeakers and Verbena obviously should be able to deal with nature spirits for REAL ULTIMATE POWER.
The Syndicate might make deals with space aliums.
VAs might consort with the sorts of things on the Digital Web.
Iteration X should be able to get "prototype augmentations" directly from the Computer.
The Void Engineers and Etherites might just Enemy Within-style use orange space tang to fuse you with alien DNA.
Spirit Pacts and Investments
Humans often make deals with the beings of the Umbra. They have for as long as humanity has existed. To have eternal youth, or immense beauty, or superb skill, or the ability to tell the future-these are things the magi can grant, but spirits can give them too. Spirits, after all, are just as much a reflection of mankind as Consensus. And some of them have natures which lend them to making deals with mankind.
The spirit pact is the result. A mage or Sleeper who knows of a spirit summons them and makes a bargain-often fulfilling a goal of the spirit in exchange for power. This pact might be temporary-a pledge to clean up a river or shut down a factory to a nature-spirit in exchange for improved vitality or faster healing, or it might be permanent-Iterators pledge loyalty to the point of death to the Computer, and are rewarded with bleeding-edge augmentation. Choristers uphold the voice of the One in exchange for the assistance of angels. Of course, there are those spirits which are rather savvier with their investments, seeking to gain powerful pawns in their own games. The initial reward for serving them is great, the tasks minor. At the start. The first hit is always free, when dealing with more dangerous entities which seek to bind magi into servitude.
Unfortunately, nobody can agree on the malevolence of certain entities. An Iterator with pretensions of being a cyber-knight might believe that pledging loyalty to the Computer, and a dedication to uphold Its vision of protecting and guiding humanity, in exchange for additional R-grade cybernetic augmentation, is merely showing their loyalty to the Convention and to the ideals of the Singularity. For a Verbena, such an action is just evidence that all Iterators are Infernalists. A Verbena might deal with the Horned God, which a Chorister finds to be outright Neffandery. Spirit Pacts tend to lead to the sort of philosophical arguments between magi which end with one or more of the participants dead like that, and the majority of time spent by arbitrators and mediators in both the Technocracy and Traditions is trying to resolve these conflicts. It doesn't help that some of these spirit-pacted are Nephandic. May spirits don't care whether someone seeks the destruction of the world, as long as their personal goals are achieved.
Not all investments are gained from spirit pacts, though. Both the Void Engineers and Hermetics have been willing to take by force what is not given to them. Void Engineer marines sport Haiden xenografts and Meld-altered DNA, power-hungry Hermetics who face hostile spirits might tear power from their corpus, stealing divine fire from what might once have been gods. Recently, the Progenitors have started doing the same, stripping gene sequences and tissue from xenobiological entities for their Damage Control agents.
One of the advantages of Investments and spirit pacts is that they are easily available for consors and the non-magical. Although spirits are relatively rare, and will only give up their power for good reason, they are still more common than magi, and without the industry of the Technocracy, it is often much easier for a consor to seek superhuman prowess through linear sorcery and spirit Investment rather than enchantment. The Traditions tend to keep such rewards and benefits on a tight leash, and consors loyal enough to be good candidates are generally willing to jump through such hoops.
The people who aren't... generally don't become consors. After all, if they might bargain away part of their very soul to a spirit for no reason, who's to say they won't take a million dollars from the Technocracy to sell you out? And well, it's not particularly expensive to find a fellow mage with Spirit 1 or Entropy 1 to make sure nobody's been cheating.
Investments
Unlike Enhancements, Investments do not increase permanent Paradox and do not incur Paradox when used. However, at the end of any scene where Investments were used in a blatantly impossible manner (which would have garnered Paradox), the character must roll Paradox + Investments. Should the character roll 5 or more successes on that roll, they are immediately ejected into the Umbra.
Investments and Enhancements can stack, although extensive investment in both is rare. Such is often reserved for the most fearsome combatants on all sides. VE ultranauts, Euthanatos demigods, Choristers who have given themselves almost entirely to become vessels of cherubim guardians, Verbena and Dreamspeaker avatars for old gods, House Janissary elites, Nephandic Shaitans-those who invest heavily in both true magical enhancement and spirit investment can easily tear a werewolf apart with their bare hands without slowing and still possess the godlike power of a true mage. Investments are also far more visible than Enhancements. Spirit pacts can be seen in someone's aura via Awareness, detected via Spirit 1 or Entropy 1, and a character with significant amounts of Investment shows obvious inhuman traits which even Sleepers might pick up on, even if they don't know what they mean. They'll, however, understand that the person in question is 'weird.'
'Cause the entrenched upper crust who have been enforcing "the way things are" is just fucking gone and/or a psychotic space ghost.
